960 entries categorized "Homeland Security / Immigration"

May 09, 2016

The New York Times reports a Mexican judge has ruled that Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín Guzmán Loera , can be extradited to the United States, where he would face federal charges of drug trafficking and far slimmer chances of escaping prison, as he has done twice in his home country. The ruling essentially creates the basis for the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Mexico to grant the final approval for the extradition of Guzmán within the next 30 days. “The ball is now in the Foreign Ministry’s court and they have a month to execute the process or not,” said a spokesman for the judiciary in Mexico. “They have been notified and received the file.”

April 28, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Wednesday it wouldn't consider telling Apple Inc. how the agency was able to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. The decision brings to an abrupt end an internal government debate about how much to tell Apple about a newly discovered security vulnerability in one iPhone model. The FBI decision not to initiate a broad governmental discussion called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process—in which a number of agencies explore whether to disclose software vulnerabilities to the affected companies—means Apple will likely be kept in the dark about exactly how the government was able to crack the model 5c iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

April 20, 2016

The Washington Post reports a public advocate appointed by the nation’s secretive surveillance court last year argued that a little-known provision of the PRISM program, which enables the FBI to query foreign intelligence information for evidence of domestic crime, violated the Constitution. But the court disagreed with her. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asked Amy Jeffress, the advocate, in August to assess the provision, according to a court opinion filed in November but released by the intelligence community only on Tuesday

April 18, 2016

The Associated Press reports the Supreme Court is taking up an important dispute over immigration that could affect millions of people who are living in the country illegally. The Obama administration is asking the justices in arguments Monday to allow it to put in place two programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States. Texas is leading 26 states dominated by Republicans in challenging the programs President Barack Obama announced in 2014 and that have been put on hold by lower courts.

April 14, 2016

The Washington Post reports Microsoft wants a federal judge in Seattle to strike down a law that allows courts to prohibit a tech company from telling customers that the government has sought their data. In a civil suit filed Thursday against the Justice Department, the tech giant revealed that in the past 18 months alone federal courts have issued almost 2,600 orders preventing Microsoft from alerting customers their data has been obtained in criminal probes. Notably, more than two-thirds — some 1,750 orders — had no fixed end date.v

April 13, 2016

The Washington Post reports the FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter. The new information was then used to create a piece of hardware that helped the FBI to crack the iPhone’s four-digit personal identification number without triggering a security feature that would have erased all the data, the individuals said. The researchers, who typically keep a low profile, specialize in hunting for vulnerabilities in software and then in some cases selling them to the U.S. government.

April 06, 2016

The Associated Press reports the first Syrian family to be resettled in the U.S. under a speeded-up "surge operation" for refugees left Jordan on Wednesday for Kansas City, Missouri, to start a new life. Ahmad al-Abboud, who is being resettled with his wife and five children, said he is thankful to Jordan, where he has lived for three years after fleeing Syria's civil war. But the 45-year-old from Homs, Syria, said he was ready to build a better life in the U.S. "I'm happy. America is the country of freedom and democracy, there are jobs opportunities, there is good education, and we are looking forward to having a good life over there," al-Abboud said.

The Washington Post reports FBI agents entered Keith Gartenlaub’s home in Southern California while he and his wife were visiting her relatives in Shanghai. Agents wearing gloves went through boxes, snapped pictures of documents and made copies of three computer hard drives before leaving as quietly as they had entered.The bureau suspected that Gartenlaub was a spy for China.The FBI had obtained a secret search warrant to enter the house, citing national security grounds. But since the search in January 2014, no spy or hacking charges have been brought against him. Instead, seven months later, he was charged with the possession and receipt of child pornography. He has denied the charges, but a jury convicted him in December.

April 05, 2016

The Washington Post reports the State Department on Tuesday designated Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November attacks in Paris, a global terrorist, imposing sanctions on him and prohibiting Americans from dealing with him. Abdeslam was called an operative for the Islamic State. The French citizen, who was born in Belgium, has been charged with terrorist murder for his role in the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, among them an American college student, and injured more than 350 others. Abdeslam was captured in mid-March in Brussels and is awaiting extradition from Belgium to France.

April 04, 2016

The New York Times reports a “foreign fighter surge team” of experts from the F.B.I., State Department and Department of Homeland Security met with their Belgian counterparts a month before the Brussels terrorist attacks to try to correct gaps in Belgium’s widely criticized ability to track terrorist plots, American officials said. The half-dozen experts focused on long-term structural fixes to the Belgians’ failure to share intelligence effectively and to tighten porous borders, but not on providing information about suspected Islamic State operatives. The recommendations, even if accepted, would not have prevented the deadly attacks at the Brussels Airport and in the city’s subway last month, the officials said.

March 24, 2016

The Washington Post reports a Chinese businessman pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles to helping two Chinese military hackers carry out a damaging series of thefts of sensitive military secrets from U.S. contractors. The plea by Su Bin, a Chinese citizen who ran a company in Canada, marks the first time the U.S. government has won a guilty plea from someone involved with a Chinese government campaign of economic cyberespionage. The resolution of the case comes as the Justice Department seeks the extradition from Germany of a Syrian hacker — a member of the group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army — on charges of conspiracy to hack U.S. government agencies and U.S. media outlets.

The Washington Post reports the Justice Department on Thursday announced it has indicted seven hackers associated with the Iranian government and charged them with cybercrimes. The crimes include disrupting U.S. banks’ public websites from late 2011 through May 2013 and with breaking into a small dam in Rye, N.Y., in an apparent attempt to stop its operation. The indictment marks the first time the government is charging people linked to a national government with disrupting or attempting to disrupt critical U.S. infrastructure or computer systems of key industries such as finance and water.

March 22, 2016

Reuters reports the United States on Tuesday slapped a special terrorist designation on Indonesia's most high-profile backer of Islamic State, blocking any U.S. assets he might have, banning dealings with him by Americans and opening the way for U.S. law-enforcement action against him. The State Department said Santoso, a militant in Poso in central Sulawesi who has been on the run for more than three years, had been added to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT). Santoso, like many in Indonesia, goes by one name. "As a result of this designation, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Santoso has any interest is blocked and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with Santoso," the department said in a statement.

Wired reports just as the FBI’s standoff with Apple seemed to be coming to a head, the government has abruptly changed course. And it may be backing down altogether from the most public battle in the growing war between law enforcement and tech firms over encryption. On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a motion for a continuance on a hearing set to happen tomorrow in Riverside, California, where it would have argued its case that Apple must help it to crack the iPhone 5C of dead San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI hasn’t given up on accessing the data in Farook’s phone. But it now says it may not need Apple’s assistance to crack the device after all, which it had previously told a judge it could legally compel using the 1789 law known as the All Writs Act.

March 21, 2016

The Washington Post reports the best that officials in Plainfield, N.J., can tell, the hackers got in when someone was on the Internet researching grants, and soon employees in the mayor’s office were locked out of their own files. City officials scrambled to pull servers offline, but three had been compromised, leaving memos, city newsletters and other documents inaccessible. The culprits said they would release the files, but only if the city coughed up about 650 euros, paid in bitcoin, Mayor Adrian Mapp said. When the city instead turned to law enforcement, he said, the hackers vanished. The computers in Plainfield had been infected with “ransomware” — a type of malware that cybersecurity experts and law enforcement officials say is proliferating across the United States and around the world.

March 18, 2016

The Associated Press reports the American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq earlier this week said he made "a bad decision" in joining the IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station. In the TV interview, which aired late Thursday night, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul. Once in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city that was captured by the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, Khweis was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters, he told the Kurdistan 24 station.

March 17, 2016

Wired reportsApple’s latest brief in its battle with the FBI over the San Bernardino iPhone offered the tech company an opportunity to school the Feds over their misinterpretation and misquotations of a number of statutes and legal cases they cited as precedent in their own brief last week. Many viewed Apple’s arguments as a withering commentary on the government’s poor legal acumen. According to Apple, many of the cases the government uses to support its argument that the All Writs Act can be used to compel Apple to help crack the phone don’t actually have anything to do with the All Writs Act, or encryption, or anything of relevance to the current case.

March 16, 2016

The Washington Post reports the American man who was reportedly fighting for the Islamic State before turning himself in to Kurdish forces in Iraq was a 2007 graduate of Fairfax County’s Edison High School who, by the accounts of some who knew him, showed no violent tendencies or signs of religious fanaticism. Mohamad Khweis — known to high school classmates as “Mike” or “Mo” — was not even on the FBI’s radar until he was picked up in Iraq. FBI agents have since launched an investigation into the matter, officials familiar with the case said.

March 14, 2016

The New York Times reports an American fighting for the Islamic State was captured in northern Iraq early Monday morning, according to Kurdish and American officials. The American, identified by Kurdish officials as a young man from Virginia, was captured near the city of Sinjar, which Kurdish forces retook from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in November. A senior American military official and the Kurdish official, fighting with Kurdish pesh merga forces, confirmed the capture on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said at Monday’s news briefing that he could not answer any questions about the man.

Wired reports if there’s anything the world has learned from the standoff over the encrypted iPhone of San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook, it’s that the FBI doesn’t take no for an answer. And now it’s becoming clear that the government’s determination to access encrypted data doesn’t end with a single iPhone, or with Apple, or even with data stored on devices. It may extend as far as any app that encrypts secrets in transit or in the cloud. Messaging service WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and has encrypted messages between its Android users for the past two years, is the next tech firm to be drawn into the widening battle between U.S. law enforcement and Silicon Valley over encryption.

The Washington Post reports bomb-sniffing dogs apparently discovered two U.S-made anti-tank Hellfire missiles on a passenger plane at Belgrade Airport in Serbia over the weekend, according to a report in the Associated Press. The missiles were found Saturday and, according to media reports, had been transported on an Air Serbia flight that had come from Beirut. According to shipping documents, the payload had a final destination in Portland, Ore. According to Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the missiles were inert and were being transported by a contractor. In June 2015, the U.S. State Department approved a possible sale of 1,000 Hellfire missiles to Lebanon through the Foreign Military Sales Program

March 04, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports Twitter is the main player in a case heating up in federal court in Oakland. The court fight doesn’t involve a consumer device but information that Twitter wants to make public but that the government says cannot be released because it contains classified details about secret terrorism investigations. Twitter sued the U.S. government in 2014 for the right to disclose more details about the scope of the government’s national security requests for user data. It claims the government is restricting its First Amendment rights by barring the release of information the company claims wasn’t properly classified. And it wants the court to declare that it can’t be prosecuted for releasing it.

March 03, 2016

Wired reports on Wednesday the Department of Defense announced that it’s launching a “Hack the Pentagon” pilot program to pay independent security researchers who disclose bugs in the Pentagon’s public-facing websites, and to eventually roll out the initiative to the DoD’s less public targets including its applications and even its networks. The DoD hasn’t yet named which of its websites are part of the program or how much it plans to pay for bug reports. But the announcement nonetheless represents the first time the U.S. federal government has launched a bug bounty program. This is an acknowledgement that even an agency with the Pentagon’s significant cybersecurity resources and expensive contractors doesn’t have enough eyes to find all its hackable vulnerabilities.

March 01, 2016

The Wall Street Journal reports Indiana unconstitutionally discriminated against Syrian refugees by freezing federal funds that were supposed to help fleeing families resettle in the state, a federal judge has ruled. The decision is the latest legal setback for state efforts to resist plans by the Obama administration to bring in thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in that country. According to a lawyer involved, it marks the first time a court has ruled that a state opposing the resettlement process violated the U.S. Constitution. In other cases, like one Texas, states have sued to block Syrians from moving into their borders. Law Blog, for instance, wrote about a judge’s rejection of Texas’ request to halt Syrian resettlement.

The Associated Press reports the high-stakes legal fight between Apple Inc. and the Justice Department over a locked iPhone is moving from the courts to Congress. FBI Director James Comey and Apple chief lawyer Bruce Sewell are appearing before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on encryption Tuesday afternoon. The hearing comes amid two significant and conflicting court rulings in New York and California on whether Apple can be forced to help the FBI gain access to locked phones. Comey warns in his prepared testimony that technological advancements have been accompanied by "new dangers."

February 23, 2016

The New York Times reports the Department of Homeland Security, at the urging of Congress, is building tools to more aggressively examine the social media accounts of all visa applicants and those seeking asylum or refugee status in the United States for possible ties to terrorist organizations. Posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media can reveal a wealth of information that can be used to identify potential terrorists, but experts say the department faces an array of technical, logistical and language barriers in trying to analyze the millions of records generated every day.

February 19, 2016

The New York Times reports the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday added three countries to a growing list that would prohibit people who have visited those nations in the past five years from entering the United States without a visa.The new countries are Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The department indicated that other nations could be added. The Obama administration previously announced changes to the visa-waiver program that would make it harder for travelers to enter the United States from Europe if they had dual citizenship from Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria, or had visited one of those countries in the last five years. The restrictions announced on Thursday would not apply to those with dual citizenship in Libya, Somalia or Yemen, the agency said

February 09, 2016

The New York Times reports an American actor and designer said he was barred from boarding a plane in Mexico on Monday for a flight home to New York because he refused to remove his turban during a security check. The actor, Waris Ahluwalia, who follows the Sikh religion and wears a turban, said he checked in at the Aeroméxico counter at Mexico City’s international airport about 5:30 a.m. and was given his first-class boarding pass with a code that he said meant he needed secondary security screening.

February 04, 2016

The Washington Post reports a 21-year-old Kansas man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to attempting to detonate what he thought was a 1,000 pound ammonium nitrate bomb on the Fort Riley Army base in Manhattan, Kansas. John Booker of Topeka was netted in an FBI sting in 2014 when he was introduced to an FBI informant, whoeventually led Booker to another informant. The two insiders helped Booker with the construction of a bomb made primarily of inert components. According to a Department of Justice statement, Booker told the informants that he “dreamed of being a fighter in the Middle East, and proposed capturing and killing an American soldier” and that a suicide attack would ensure that he hit his target.

February 03, 2016

The Associated Press reports a North Carolina man killed his neighbor and stole the man's money so he could buy an assault rifle to carry out an Islamic State-inspired shooting at a concert or club, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. The federal indictment also accuses Justin Nojan Sullivan of offering an undercover FBI employee money to kill his parents, who he believed would interfere with his plans for an attack. The 19-year-old suspect, who was arrested in June, "planned to carry out his attack in the following few days at a concert, bar or club where he believed that as many as 1,000 people could be killed using the assault rifle and silencer," the indictment said. The indictment charges Sullivan with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State and trying to use social media to have his parents killed. He also faces firearms charges.

January 19, 2016

BBC News reports the Supreme Court has said it will consider a challenge to one of President Barack Obama's key immigration reform plans. The plan would lift the threat of deportation from five million migrants living illegally in the US. A coalition of 26 mostly conservative states, led by Texas, has been successful in lower court challenges. A decision from the highest court is expected in the early summer, just as the election gets into full swing. "We are confident that the policies will be upheld as lawful," said White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. President Obama announced the plan, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), in November 2014.

January 12, 2016

The Washington Post reports the United States has repatriated a Saudi prisoner held for nearly 14 years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said Monday, the latest signal of an intensifying effort to shutter the military prison before President Obama steps down. In a statement, the Pentagon said that Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Awn al-Shamrani, whom U.S. officials describe as an al-Qaeda recruiter and fighter, had arrived in Saudi Arabia, making him the fourth prisoner to be released from Guantanamo this year. According to military documents made public by WikiLeaks, Shamrani fought with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001 before being captured in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo in January 2002.

January 11, 2016

The Washington Post reports supporters of the Islamic State terrorist group are urging American sympathizers to try to instigate more anti-government demonstrations like last week’s armed takeover of a federal building in rural eastern Oregon. A Twitter posting addressed to members of the Islamic State community describes the ongoing occupation by armed rancher Ammon Bundy and his fellow activists as a “key opportunity,” and suggests that Islamists should do what they can to help them. It urges sympathizers of the organization also known as ISIS and ISIL to encourage the Oregon protesters—using messages sent from accounts with American-sounding names—and to suggest more targets for future take-overs.

January 08, 2016

The Associated Press reports two Iraqi-born men who came to the United States as refugees have been arrested on terrorism-related charges by federal authorities who allege one traveled to Syria to fight with terrorists in the civil war and the other provided support to the Islamic State group. There was no evidence either man - one from Texas and the other from California - intended or planned attacks in the United States, but the arrests announced Thursday, little more than a month after the deadly San Bernardino attack, immediately brought new life to a U.S. debate over whether the United States is doing enough to screen refugees from Syria for terrorists from that nation.

BBC News reports an officer in Philadelphia was ambushed by a man who pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS), police officials have said. The gunman, 30, fired at least 11 shots at the officer, in an act done "in the name of Islam." The officer returned fire, striking the gunman at least three times, in what the police chief described as an attempted "execution." The suspect escaped on foot but was apprehended by police shortly after. "This is absolutely one of the scariest things I've ever seen," Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. "This guy tried to execute the police officer. The police officer had no idea he was coming."

The New York Times reports top Obama administration officials have flown out to Silicon Valley and will meet Friday with technology executives to try to persuade them to do more to stop terrorists from using their platforms to recruit followers and incite violence, according to executives and officials involved. In a reflection of just how urgent the White House views the discussions, they will involve officials like Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff; Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director; and Lisa Monaco, the president’s counterterrorism adviser.

January 07, 2016

The Washington Post reports the New York Police Department has agreed to settle a pair of federal lawsuits that claimed Muslims were the target of baseless surveillance and investigations because of their religion. As part of the agreement with civil rights groups that was disclosed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, the NYPD said it would strengthen the oversight of terrorism investigations and ensure that it follows a series of guidelines to avoid religious profiling. The NYPD’s decision to settle the case is a victory for Muslims in the city who asserted that the department’s intelligence division had gone too far in its efforts to identify potential terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

January 06, 2016

The Washington Post reports U.S. Homeland Security and intelligence agencies are analyzing computer code from what appear to be one of the first known cyberattacks that resulted in an electrical power outage — this one in Ukraine. The Dec. 23 incidents, which lasted several hours and affected tens of thousands of people, were reported by Ukraine power authorities in the capital region and in the western part of the country. The power authorities said that control systems used to coordinate remote substations were disabled in the cyberattack.

January 04, 2016

The Associated Press reports an armed anti-government group took over a remote national wildlife refuge in Oregon as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West, while federal authorities are keeping watch but keeping their distance. The group came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to contest the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land, but their ultimate goal is to turn over the property to local authorities so people can use it free of U.S. oversight. People across the globe have marveled that federal authorities didn't move to take back the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

December 14, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports two key New York officials want to ban the sale of firearms to individuals on U.S. terrorist watch lists, a measure they say would deny weapons to suspected terrorists. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, both Democrats, called Sunday on federal officials either to pass a law prohibiting anyone on the lists from purchasing a firearm, or to make watch lists available to individual states so that New York can implement its own ban. Terrorist watch lists are kept classified by the federal government, they said. The proposal comes after Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, promised on Thursday to sign an executive order banning the sale of firearms to people in his state who are on watch lists.

The Washington Post reports a Maryland man has been charged with providing material support to the Islamic State and lying to the FBI, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. Mohamed Yousef ElShinawy, 30, of Edgewood was arrested Friday afternoon at his home. Officials said he was communicating with Islamic State terrorists overseas who sent him money to carry out a possible attack or to travel to Syria. ElShinawy is expected to be arraigned Monday in federal court. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the details of the case. It was not clear Monday whether ElShinawy has retained an attorney.

December 10, 2015

The Wall Street Journal reports a federal judge in Dallas has refused Texas’ request to block a batch of Syrian refugees from resettling in Texas, ruling that concerns that terrorists may be attempting to infiltrate the resettlement program are too speculative. The decision, which came down Wednesday, responded to an injunction request filed by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which said nine Syrian refugees were expected to arrive Thursday. In a court filing earlier in the day, lawyers at Texas attorney general’s office said they feared that terrorists could be posing as Syrian refugees to slip into the country. The state’s request for court intervention referred to recent public comments by House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas), who said “individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria” are “attempting to gain entry into the U.S. through the U.S. refugee program.” McCaul cited an unclassified letter he received from the National Counterterrorism Center.

The Washington Post reports in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, there is growing sentiment among security hawks on Capitol Hill for legislation to ensure that law enforcement has access to encrypted communication. On Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) became the latest senior lawmaker to call for such legislation. “If there is a conspiracy going on” among terrorist suspects using encrypted devices, “that encryption ought to be able to be pierced,” said Feinstein, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Her remarks came at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which FBI Director James B. Comey asserted that it would be “useful” for Congress to “drive this conversation.”

December 08, 2015

The New York Times reports the couple who carried out the deadly attack that killed 14 people here last week had long been radicalized and had been practicing at a target range days before their murder spree, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday. The characterization of the husband and wife team, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, came as F.B.I. investigators were leaning away from the theory that Ms. Malik, who declared allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook around the time of the attack, had led her American-born husband to the violence. “As the investigation has progressed, we have learned and believe that both subjects were radicalized and have been for quite some time,” David Bowdich, the F.B.I. assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, said at a news conference here.

December 04, 2015

BBC News reports a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California is being investigated as an act of terrorism, the FBI says. It followed reports that the woman suspect in the attack had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on social media. Tashfeen Malik, 27, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, died in a shootout with police after the killings at San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles. Fourteen people were killed and 21 wounded in Wednesday's attack. Tashfeen Malik is reported to have posted the message on Facebook in support of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The post has since been removed.

December 01, 2015

The New York Times reports the White House announced changes Monday to the government’s visa-waiver program to try to stop those who have visited conflict zones from easily boarding American-bound commercial flights, a move intended to prevent an attack in the United States similar to the ones that struck Paris. But the new measures — which include potentially higher fines for airlines that fail to verify their passengers’ identities and increased information-sharing between countries — are limited, and White House officials acknowledged that they would need Congress to pass legislation to further tighten controls. Congressional Republican leaders announced Monday that they would pursue more potent legislation to toughen the waiver program.

November 24, 2015

The Associated Press reports Americans should be alert to the possible travel risks, especially during the holidays, following increased threats from militant groups around the world, the State Department warned on Monday. A travel alert, which is to be in effect until Feb. 24, said current information suggests that militants with the Islamic State, al-Qaida, Boko Haram and other groups continue to plan attacks in multiple regions. U.S. authorities said the likelihood of such attacks will continue as members of IS return from Syria and Iraq, and other individuals not affiliated with terror groups engage in violence on their own. "U.S. citizens should exercise vigilance when in public places or using transportation," the alert said. "Be aware of immediate surroundings and avoid large crowds or crowded places. Exercise particular caution during the holiday season and at holiday festivals or events."

November 19, 2015

The New York Times reports the House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to slap stringent — and difficult to implement — new screening procedures on refugees from Syria seeking resettlement, seizing on the fear stemming from the Paris attacks and threatening to cloud President Obama’s Middle East policy. The bill, which passed 289 to 137with nearly 50 Democrats supporting it, would require that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence confirm that each applicant from Syria and Iraq poses no threat, a demand the White House called “untenable.” The measure received significant support from Democrats, even after administration officials implored them to abandon the measure on Thursday morning.

November 18, 2015

The Washington Post reports in the summer, when even top law enforcement officials acknowledged that Congress was unlikely to force U.S. tech firms to make their phones and apps wiretappable, one senior intelligence official noted that the tide could turn “in the event of a terrorist attack.” The horrific Islamic State assault on Paris that claimed 129 lives may be that event, some federal and local officials say. It is not yet clear whether the plotters of the terrorist attacks that killed 129 civilians in the French capital used encrypted channels of communication. That hasn’t stopped some U.S. lawmakers and a number of state and local officials to call on Congress to act.

November 17, 2015

The Washington Post reports as France reels from an Islamic State terror attack in Paris last week that killed scores and wounded hundreds, Americans are wondering whether their own country is any safer. “That’s an easy one,” said a former senior FBI official who until recently was deeply involved in terrorism operations. “Safer here than there? Yes.We are separated by an ocean. Without a doubt, we are safer here than over there.” Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1 trillion fighting the war on terrorism, making its border crossings more secure, detecting plots and expanding the no-fly list from about a dozen people to roughly 47,000.